NBA 2012-13 Season Thread - Crown The Heat!

He isn't better offensively though. You could argue they're pretty equal using this season as the only sample, but you're going to have a hard time looking at any other stretch of their careers and making that claim. This isn't mean to knock Durant he's an all world offensive player and while his stats get close to LBJ's they do not by any means trump them.

You can cherry pick outliers all you want. They're still outliers. And to be honest I don't think your examples really apply. Dirk's career playoff metrics are nearly identical to his regular seasons. I don't really care that when playing 5 minutes more a game he grabs another rebound. That's logical and doesn't mean he's playing better in the postseason. It just means he's playing more.

Dirk's career regular season PER is 23.5. Postseason it's 24.7. For WS48 its .210 and .205. Both of those are just box score calculations. If you don't want to look at that you can compare percentages. His career rebound % is 13. In the playoffs its 14. Shooting %? 47 and 46. Assist %? 13 and 12.

What do all those numbers tell you? Yeah...he's the same exact player regardless.

And despite his blockable shot, LeBron somehow manages to get the ball through the hoop at a greater percentage in "crunch" time.

http://www.libertyballers.com/2012/2...fs-4th-quarter

You can still side with the shooting form all you want but I'll stick with what the stats tell me.

Also, just for the record, LeBron has less % of his shots blocked than Durant does.

Yeah I've posted the link before. Usually when Lakers fans start bringing up BS reasons why Kobe is so great (outside of him playing with other great players). But this argument is Durant v LeBron. LeBron's shooting % in the clutch is better and he gets blocked less. Who cares where Kevin's release point is if statistically his shot doesn't translate to the ball going through the hoop (as much)?

The blocked % isn't a great argument because neither player gets blocked very often. But LeBron's is still a percentage point less.

Edit: Also I'm depressed about the Wolves this season so posting random stats about the greatness of LeBron is all I really have.


While we're rehashing the past...here's a fun one. I got my ass handed to me last playoffs for saying Harden was better than Westbrook. Anyone still think I was wrong? James has had his shooting %s drop being the first option, but his assist and FT numbers are up which is pretty much what I said would happen.

Harden: 26/5/6 .45/.35/.85 10 FTA
Westb: 23/5/8 .43/.33/.80 7 FTA

They're pretty close but Harden is doing that on a far less superior team. At the very least the idea isn't as outlandish as everyone thought it was when I brought it up, is it?

The assertion that Westbrook would be putting upbetterstatsnotplaying next to Durant and Ibaka is laughable. Russell takes the most shots on his team and has the highest usage (higher than Harden too).

Harden no showed in 3 of the 20 games he played in last year's playoffs. His performance was stellar otherwise. People that base opinions of players on less than 2% of a player's total playing time are the same ones that dismissed LeBron after a poor showing in 7 of the 700 games he had played total. The Finals aren't some magical playground where pros forget how to play basketball.

You're from Texas right?

Anyway...Yeah. Maybe my tone is getting a little harsh. I'm just bored and don't like claims that don't come with any support.

I took this:

He is a better defender and he is putting up similar stats while being the teams secondary scoring option (not first)

To mean that if he was the first option he would be putting up better stats (my mistake if that's not what you meant). My only counter being that he's already shooting more than anyone on his team and has the highest usage. I don't by any means argue that there's any comparison in talent level between him and Durant (or whoshouldbe getting the most shots), but there's certainly a grey area as to who is the top "option" on the team currently.

Regardless, Harden and Westbrook...comparable right? I made the comments up above simply because I was laughing thinking back to how much crap I took for those comments. I don't think most people here thought Harden was capable of playing at the level he is now. And I was curious if anyone would come out and eat crow.

Trying to be more civil here. Sorry. Just bored at work.

Gaige_sl said:

Six straight games of 30+ points on 60%+ shooting - the only player to ever do it.

Click to expand...

I'm the biggest "LeBron is the best we've seen since Jordan" guy you'll find but this stat doesn't really mean anything we didn't already know about LeBron.

Because it's the first time he's played 6 teams in a row that are this bad? I really have no clue if that's true but way to stomp 4 lottery teams, an 8th seed and the Clippers. The last one is definitely a quality win, but combine that with a hot streak and this is what you get.

I really don't care to look at it any further. It's impressive but meaningless and will be forgotten in a week.